These three words are my trumpet call, the signal that it is time to leave, and the action necessary to ensure an on-time departure. I used them with my children. Many years later, the mother of my granddaughters uses the exact words. When I used them on my writing colleagues at a retreat, they declared it was the best thing they had heard come out of me and pledged to use it with their children.
Imagination v. Reality
When you get to a certain age, especially with the onset of grandchildren, you start thinking about legacy. We hope to leave an indelible mark on our families and imagine generations to come talking about us and our accomplishments in glowing terms.
The reality is sobering. Our grandchildren’s children will likely be blissfully unaware of our names, let alone our accomplishments. I surveyed friends to see how many first names they knew of their eight great-grandparents. Hardly any knew more than two names (I managed three). Few could tell a brief story about any great-grandparent.
Should I despair that Little Ricky’s children might not know of the millions of frozen entrees our company produced or the hundreds of thousands of words I wrote? Does this future “ignorance” diminish those accomplishments? Absolutely not. They were worthwhile endeavors that served important purposes, but they will not be my legacy.
What about fame? In fifty years, Kim Kardashian will be as famous as Elizabeth Taylor is today. Generational wealth? Today’s Vanderbilts possess only a sliver of the Commodore’s vast fortune.
Where
We focus on how many people we reach instead of how many we touch. We forget that the closest, not the most famous, people make the greatest impact.
Your favorite teacher meant more to you than Celine Dion, the youth sports coach more than Michael Jordan, and your grandma more than the occupant of the White House. You may have known the words to all her songs, said you wanted to “Be like Mike,” and listened to every message from the Oval Office, but they are not the people you mention when asked who affected you the most.
What we did with and to our descendants will be engraved in their memory more deeply than what we achieved elsewhere. My little girls will remember early-morning breakfasts of scrambled eggs and toast, our knock-over fly game, impromptu lessons on supply and demand at the grocery store, baking Meli’s cookies, my leaving for a couple of hours on Sunday mornings, and my tirades against sugary sweets. They will decide what those moments say about me and what they take from them.
As for my impact on more remote generations, it will only be a downstream effect of my interactions with those I know.
While I have only mentioned grandchildren, our children are our first opportunity to build a legacy. We do (or did) our best with our children, but with less wisdom and more chances, we inevitably make a lot of mistakes. Fortunately, grandparents get a second chance.
With all the profound words I think I have written and uttered, will “Shoes, potty, door” be my legacy? Why not? The words have more practical value and enduring relevance than my name. After all, when will we stop using shoes, the potty, or walking out the door?
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All our pursuits have merit, but we should be mindful that our closest actions determine our legacy. Act accordingly.
